HS-GC-MS volatile compounds recovered in freshly pressed 'Wonderful' cultivar and commercial pomegranate juices.

Consumption and production of superfruits has been increasing. Highly colored fruits often have bitter and astringent components that may make them undesirable, especially when processed. Many pomegranate volatile reports involved commercial samples, complicated isolation methods, or blending and concentrating that were from arils only, cultivars other than 'Wonderful', or mixed cultivars. Solid phase microextraction (SPME), polydimethylsiloxane stir bar sorptive extraction, and Tenax adsorption were performed with freshly pressed 'Wonderful' juices, commercial juices and concentrates. Using SPME, 36 compounds were isolated in whole pressed 'Wonderful' juices, including 18 of the 21 consensus compounds. In arils-only juices, 41 compounds were isolated by SPME, including 17 of the consensus volatiles. Dramatic variation existed in volatiles recovered in commercial juices and isolation of consensus compounds was sporadic. This article and summary of the literature serves to possibly deliver an improved volatile data set via a rapid method for fresh and partially processed (pressed) pomegranates.

Physicochemical properties and aroma volatile profiles in a diverse collection of California-grown pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) germplasm.

Colorful antioxidant-rich fruits often convey astringency and sourness that juice consumers may not appreciate. We assessed properties in juices from a collection of California-grown pomegranate from the National Clonal Germplasm Repository. The goal was to evaluate overall differences in germplasm with quality traits classified as sweet, sweet-sour and sour. Previous relationships noted in sweet and sour cultivar attributes were observed. Wonderful generally clustered with sweet-sour and sour cultivars. Sweet low acid cultivars occasionally clustered closely with Wonderful which is hard to rationalize. The dominant compounds were 3-hexenol and 1-hexanol which allowed separation of Kara Gul, Haku-botan and Wonderful. Aldehyde and terpene content can be used to characterize cultivars. The study represents the first data on variation in juice qualities in different sweet, sweet-sour and sour cultivars, grown in California, compared with Wonderful. Data may help the juice industry better select raw juice materials in order to ultimately satisfy consumers.